Question: Multiple extruders with different characteristics

E3D has released a new high volume (Volcano) extruder that is capable of 1 mm layer heights. Great for rapid building but bad for surface quality/detail. Will slic3d (or any slicer) allow me to set up a dual extruder with a Volcano and standard 0.4 mm tip? The advantage of this setup would be rapid builds where surface didn't matter and high quality were needed.

Would be nice but I'm not sure how this could be done. The model could be built using existing color mapping to extruder feature to define which size extruder to use but it seems like a very difficult problem for a slicer.

Roger

Been meaning to test something like this for a while now.

First thing to consider though is on the hardware end. The volcano is a decent bit longer than the standard v6 hot end, so you'd need that offsets the difference in Z height.

As far as software...the simplest case would be to configure Slic3r to use the detail nozzle for perimeters and the volcano for infill (in the print settings under "Multiple Extruders"). Probably won't make a huge difference though, since you're basically just increasing the extrusion width. In my mind, the missing setting would be something that lets you set different layer heights for the different extruders. The idea being, if the detail nozzle is running .25mm layers and the volcano is running .75, you have 1/3 the machine time spent on infill. Might end up having to deal with some heat management since the perimeters are stacking quicker, but having a few objects on the build plate would probably mitigate the worst of it. I think something like Simplify3Ds sparse infill setting might work, but i haven't gotten around to testing it (mostly because i have a Kraken on my current printer, so offsetting the detail nozzle is a bit more complicated than designing a new carriage).

While I have never tried such a thing, I do not see why Slic3r could not be set up to achieve exactly what you want.

1) Set the printer to have 2 extruders ("Printer settings">"General">"Capabilities")
2) Set the extruder parameters for each extruder ("Printer settings">"Extruder1" and "Printer Settings">"Extruder 2") You can set different nozzle diameters for each.
3) Define your small nozzle for perimeters and the large one for infill ("Print Settings">Multiple Extruders">"Extruders").
4) Set your layer height to what you want for the perimeters - e.g. 0.25mm. ("Print Settings">Layers and perimeters">"Layer height").
5) Now set the "Combine infill every:" parameter to e.g. 4. ("Print Settings">"Infill">"Reduce printing time"). This results in thick infill printing every 4 layers (at 4 X the layer height).

I should think those settings will do exactly what you want. Perimeters will be printed with the 0.4mm nozzle with a layer height of 0.25mm. Every 4 layers the infill will be printed using the large nozzle with a height of 1mm (4 layers). You may also want to manually set different extrusion widths for perimeters and infill ("Print Settings">"Advanced">"Extrusion width"). Of course you can use other combinations of layer height and "combine infill" layers, such as 0.2mm and 5.

I looked for the above settings in Slic3r version 1.1.6, but I should think later versions have the same settings available - if not use a version that does.

Of course you will have to have the mechanics set up reasonably - I don't see that you can have two nozzles at different heights because the lower nozzle would hit the print when you are using the higher nozzle. Slic3r takes care of the XY offset between nozzles (set up in step [2] above).

Dave